Damage calculation
Category:Game mechanics Damage in Guild Wars results from actions taken by attackers that subtract a portion of a defender's health. This definition includes many attacks or skills (including spells) but does not include health degeneration, life stealing, or sacrifices. When an attacker attempts to damage a target, the following is factored in: *The damage type, such as Fire or Blunt. The amount of damage done may vary due to the defender's armor and resistances to that damage type. *The attacker's ability to inflict the damage. *The target's ability to resist this damage. *Bonuses on both sides. An attacker may have bonuses that augment the damage and the target may have bonuses that reduce the damage. Damage Types There are many individual damage types, and two meaningful damage type categories, Elemental and Physical. *Earth damage from Dust Trap ignores armor. **Judge's Insight is the sole exception where Holy Damage does not ignore armor. A Simplified Damage Calculation Note: For simplicity, on this page the term '''attack' describes any attempt to damage an opponent. However, whenever the word "attack" is used in skill descriptions, it refers to the attack action.'' There are many different factors to consider while calculating damage. To avoid confusion, this section presents a simplified damage calculation which only takes into consideration the more common factors. The Approximate Damage (ApproxD) depends on the Base Damage (BD) and the Armor Effect (AE). :ApproxD = BD × AE; For attacks that ignore armor, AE is set to 1. Base Damage Skill-based attacks (like Shock) have a specific base damage (BD) value indicated in the skill description. Weapons attacks select BD each time uniformly from the damage range of the weapon. For weapons that have an attribute requirement on their damage range, there is actually another hidden range used for when the attacker does not meet the requirement. The hidden range is always lower than the display range, and varies randomly from weapon to weapon. Effective Damage The Effective Damage (ED) considers all the Damage Modifiers that were dropped when calculating the Approximate Damage. The ED depends on the Base Damage (BD), various Damage Modifiers (D*), and the Armor Effect (AE). :'''ED = [(× DEnhance × AE × DScale + DShift) × DMult] + DNeg Again, for attacks that ignore armor, AE is set to 1, essentially removing it from the equation. Damage Cap and Redirection Certain enchantments will restrict the maximam damage the target can receive, or redirect some of the damage away from the target, thus making the received damage less than the Effective Damage. Cap is always applied before redirection. Notes Every 8 ranks in a physical damage attribute thus doubles the net noncaster damage caused; similarly, every 13 character levels doubles caster damage. The accounting per rank or level is as follows: every rank in attack attributes scales the damage by exactly a factor of 2(1/8) (roughly 9%), and every character level scales the caster damage by 23/40 (roughly 5.33%). Note that the effect of cumulative ranks or levels is compounded; for example, 5 ranks in an attack attribute doesn't increase damage by 45%, but by (1.095 - 1) × 100 ≈ 53%. It is important to keep in mind that certain skills such as Greater Conflagration and Judge's Insight change the damage type, and therefore can have an effect on AL bonuses or DL calculation. The articles on these skills explain their damage type changes in more detail. Only in the early PvE game, advanced PvE areas, or in exceptional situations is the EffectiveAL actually less than the EffectiveDL, so the AE generally always reduces the effective damage. The philosophy behind the AE scale can be seen as follows: in the prototypical case where the attacker and target are roughly equal PvP players, the attacker's ranked 12 noncaster attack or normal caster attack at character level 20 will exactly negate the target's EffectiveAL of 60 (standard for all spellcaster PvP armor). The AE equation gives us a handy rule of thumb: every 40 increase (decrease) in EffectiveAL halves (doubles) the amount of normal damage (i.e., damage not caused by armor ignoring attacks). A Warrior with 100 armor against physical damage being whacked by a sword will take half as much damage as any 60 armor Elementalist being whacked by the same sword. Skills such as Healing Signet temporarily reduce AL by 40, which translates to double damage for normal attacks. An increase of approximately 16 armor would correspond to taking 75% damage. (Many ranger armors such as Drakescale or Frostbound Armor give AL bonuses of +15.) Consider a Mesmer, an Elementalist, and a Ranger being hit by the same attribute level 16, caster level 20 Fireball. The Mesmer with only 60 armor takes all 119 damage. The Elementalist has Pyromancer's Armor with 75 armor against fire and takes 92. The Ranger wears Druid's Armor which has 100 armor against elemental damage so he takes 60 damage. Illustrative Examples Related Articles *Spike damage *Damage over time References *SonOfRah Damage Article by SonOfRah